New Zealand Shooter Hopes for U.S. Civil War: ‘Conservatism Is Dead, Thank God’

The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto, which will not be linked to here, is a mix of avowed white supremacist sentiment and suggested tactics to fellow extremists — including his declared intention to exploit racial, cultural, and political divisions in the U.S.

According to his manifesto, the shooter — who massacred civilians at two mosques in New Zealand’s city of Christchurch — appears to subscribe to a number of ideologies. The document is riddled with white nationalist talking points, and the shooter describes himself as a “fascist.” He also castigates Muslims as “the most despised group of invaders in the west.”

Yet elsewhere in the document, the shooter describes himself as a socialist, “depending on the definition.” The shooter also declares his support for “environmentalism,” “worker’s rights,” and “responsible markets.”

On the one hand, the manifesto presents the political left as an enemy that conducted a “march through the institutions” and describes Antifa, communists, and Marxists as “anti-white scum.” Elsewhere, the shooter writes that “under some definitions,” he is both on the right and the left.

Elsewhere, the shooter disparages conservatism and declines to identify with it, writing that “conservatism is dead, thank god,” and calling it “corporatism in disguise.” Conservatives, he says, “don’t even believe in the race, they don’t have the gall to say race exists” and “don’t even care if it does.”

“The notion of a racial future or destiny is as foreign to them as social responsibilities.”

Parts of the manifesto appear to be insincere trolling, aimed at sowing confusion about his motivations. At one point, the shooter blames his action on popular video game titles, saying “Spyro the Dragon 3 taught me ethno-nationalism” and that “Fortnite trained me to be a killer.”

Elsewhere in the document, the shooter identifies black conservative Candace Owens — obviously neither a white nationalist nor a supporter of violence — as the “person that has influenced me above all.” In a video posted online, the shooter also tells viewers to “subscribe to PewDiePie” — the pseudonym of Felix Kjellberg, a comedian and video game streamer who runs the most-subscribed channel on YouTube and whose content is majority non-political.

In both cases, the shooter attempts to link high-profile individuals — who have little in common with his stated ideology yet command large online followings and are frequently the target of unfair media hit pieces — to his attack. If it triggers a war of words between the media and their frequent targets, the result of this tactic would be more publicity for the shooter.

At three points in his manifesto, the shooter also states his intention to spark a civil war in the United States by triggering crackdowns on the Second Amendment. In his laundry list of motivations, the shooter spends the most amount of time discussing this goal, which he believes will ultimately lead to a “fracturing” of the U.S. along “cultural and racial lines.”

As he describes it, his attack will “Create conflict between the two ideologies within the United States on the ownership of firearms in order to further the social, cultural, political, and racial divide within the United States.”

“This conflict over the 2nd amendment and the attempted removal of firearms rights will eventually result in a civil war that will Balkanize the U.S. along political, cultural, and most importantly racial lines.”

Elsewhere in the manifesto, the shooter predicts that his attack will lead to “calls for the removal of gun rights from whites in the United States… that is the plan all along.”

While the shooter lists a number of highly lethal methods he might have used to carry out the act of terrorism, he states that he chose firearms “for the effect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide and the effect it would have on the politics of the United States and thereby the political situation of the world.”

“With enough pressure the left wing within the United States will seek to abolish the second amendment, and the right wing within the U.S. will see this as an attack on their very freedom and liberty. The attempted abolishment of rights by the left will result in a dramatic polarization of the people in the United States and eventually a fracturing of the U.S. along cultural and racial lines.”